Poets

Today’s Poem ~ O Beauty, Passing Beauty!

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O Beauty, Passing Beauty! 

Lord Alfred Tennyson

O beauty, passing beauty! Sweetest sweet!
How can thou let me waste my youth in sighs?
I only ask to sit beside thy feet.
Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes.
Might I but kiss thy hand! I dare not fold
My arms about thee–scarcely dare to speak.
And nothing seems to me so wild and bold,
As with one kiss to touch thy blessed cheek.
Methinks if I should kiss thee, no control
Within the thrilling brain could keep afloat
The subtle spirit. Even while I spoke,
The bare word “kiss” hath made my inner soul
To tremble like a lute string, ere the note
Hath melted in the silence that it broke.

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Today’s Poem ~ Our Blessings

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Our Blessings 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sitting to-day in the sunshine, 
That touched me with fingers of love, 
I thought of the manifold blessings
God scatters on earth, from above; 
And they seemed, as I numbered them over, 
Far more than we merit, or need, 
And all that we lack is the angels
To make earth a heaven indeed.

The winter brings long, pleasant evenings, 
The spring brings a promise of flowers
That summer breathes to fruition, 
And autumn brings glad, golden hours.
The woodlands re-echo with music, 
The moonbeams ensilver the sea; 
There is sunlight and beauty about us, 
And the world is as fair as can be.

But mortals are always complaining, 
Each one thinks his own a sad lot; 
And forgetting the good things about him, 
Goes mourning for those he has not.
Instead of the star-spangled heavens, 
We look on the dust at our feet; 
We drain out the cup that is bitter, 
Forgetting the one that is sweet.

We mourn o’er the thorn in the flower, 
Forgetting its odour and bloom; 
We pass by a garden of blossoms, 
To weep o’er the dust of the tomb.
There are blessings unnumbered about us, –
Like the leaves of the forest they grow; 
And the fault is our own – not the Giver’s –
That we have not an Eden below. 

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Today’s Poem ~ Passing Breeze

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Passing Breeze 

Rabindranath Tagore

Yes, I know, this is nothing but thy love, 
O beloved of my heart—this golden light that dances upon the leaves, 
these idle clouds sailing across the sky, 
this passing breeze leaving its coolness upon my forehead. 

The morning light has flooded my eyes—this is thy message to my heart. 
Thy face is bent from above, thy eyes look down on my eyes, 
and my heart has touched thy feet. 

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Today’s Poem ~ Lover’s Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting

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Lover’s Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting

Rabindranath Tagore

Tired of waiting, you burst your bonds, impatient flowers, before
the winter had gone. Glimpses of the unseen comer reached your
wayside watch, and you rushed out running and panting, impulsive
jasmines, troops of riotous roses.
You were the first to march to the breach of death, your
clamour of colour and perfume troubled the air. You laughed and
pressed and pushed each other, bared your breast and dropped in
heaps.
The Summer will come in its time, sailing in the flood-tide
of the south wind. But you never counted slow moments to be sure
of him. You recklessly spent your all in the road, in the terrible
joy of faith.
You heard his footsteps from afar, and flung your mantle of
death for him to tread upon. Your bonds break even before the
rescuer is seen, you make him your own ere he can come and claim
you.

Today’s Poem ~ Are You Loving Enough?

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Are you Loving Enough? 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Are you loving enough? There is some one dear,
Some one you hold as the dearest of all
In the holiest shrine of your heart.
Are you making it known? Is the truth of it clear
To the one you love? If death’s quick call
Should suddenly tear you apart,
Leaving no time for a long farewell,
Would you feel you had nothing to tell—
Nothing you wished you had said before
The closing of that dark door?

Are you loving enough? The swift years fly—
Oh, faster and faster they hurry away,
And each one carries its dead.
The good deed left for the by and by,
The word to be uttered another day,
May never be done or said.
Let the love word sound in the listening ear,
Nor wait to speak it above a bier.
Oh the time for telling your love is brief,
But long, long, long is the time for grief.
Are you loving enough?

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Today’s Poem ~ The Great Hunt

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The Great Hunt 

Carl Sandburg

I cannot tell you now;
When the wind’s drive and whirl
Blow me along no longer,
And the wind’s a whisper at last–
Maybe I’ll tell you then–
some other time.

When the rose’s flash to the sunset
Reels to the rack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long”–
Maybe I’ll tell you then–
some other time.

I never knew any more beautiful than you:
I have hunted you under my thoughts,
I have broken down under the wind
And into the roses looking for you.
I shall never find any
greater than you.

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Today’s Poem ~ Life In A Love

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Life In A Love 

Robert Browning

Escape me?
Never— 
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear— 
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed— 
But what if I fail of my purpose here?1

It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,— 
So the chase takes up one’s life, that’s all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me— 
Ever
Removed!

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Today’s Poem ~ I Arise from Dreams of Thee

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I Arise from Dreams of Thee

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 
Has led me — who knows how? — 
To thy chamber-window, sweet! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream, — 
The champak odors fall 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream, 
The nightingale’s complaint, 
It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine, 
O, beloved as thou art! 

O, lift me from the grass! 
I die, I faint, I fall! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale, 
My cheek is cold and white, alas! 
My Heart beats loud and fast 
Oh! press it close to thine again, 
Where it will break at last!

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Today’s Poem ~ Love Song

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Love Song

Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Today’s Poem ~ To Be In Love 

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To Be In Love 

Gwendolyn Brooks

To be in love 
Is to touch with a lighter hand. 
In yourself you stretch, you are well. 
You look at things 
Through his eyes. 
A cardinal is red. 
A sky is blue. 
Suddenly you know he knows too. 
He is not there but 
You know you are tasting together 
The winter, or a light spring weather. 
His hand to take your hand is overmuch. 
Too much to bear. 
You cannot look in his eyes 
Because your pulse must not say 
What must not be said. 
When he 
Shuts a door- 
Is not there_ 
Your arms are water. 
And you are free 
With a ghastly freedom. 
You are the beautiful half 
Of a golden hurt. 
You remember and covet his mouth 
To touch, to whisper on. 
Oh when to declare 
Is certain Death! 
Oh when to apprize 
Is to mesmerize, 
To see fall down, the Column of Gold, 
Into the commonest ash.

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